Joss Whedon is definitely well up in the 1%, probably the 0.01%, but that doesn't stop him from strutting his socialist creds:
“We are watching capitalism destroy itself right now,” [Whedon] told the audience.
He added that America is “turning into Tsarist Russia” and that “we’re creating a country of serfs.”
Whedon was raised on the Upper Westside neighborhood of Manhattan in the 1970s, an area associated with left-leaning intellectuals. He said he was raised by people who thought socialism was a ''beautiful concept."
Socialism remains a taboo word in American politics, as Republicans congressmen raise the specter of the Cold War. They refer to many Obama administration initatives as socialist, and the same goes for most laws that advocate increasing spending on social welfare programs. They also refer to the President as a socialist, though this and many of their other claims misuse the term.
This evidently frustrates Whedon ....
It is, of course, the classic limousine liberalism that pervades my hometown of Hollywood. Indeed, most of my immediate neighbors are Mercedes-driving putative social democrats.
But why? At a Hollywood social event, I once had a lefty in the entertainment business tell me that it was because liberals are creative and conservatives aren't. But surely that can't be right. After all, conservative capitalists have created more jobs, goods, and useful services of far greater social value than any of the ephemera that flows out of movie studios.
No, I think my late friend Larry Ribstein had it right. In his classic article Wall Street and Vine: Hollywood's View of Business, Larry argued that filmmakers are down on capitalism because they resent "capitalists' constraints on their artistic vision."
In other words, Whedon's socialism comes not from any real thought or intellectual inquiry (as anyone who has suffered through one of his films can attest). Instead, it's just because he's pissed off that the suits have final cut.
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